Transcript

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>> Ford Motor trying Tuesday to turn the page on a contentious relationship with the incoming Trump administration. After being bashed on the campaign trail for sending production and US jobs overseas, Ford, in a stunning move, announcing it's scraping plans for a new $1.6 billion plant in Mexico. Instead, it will invest $700 million in a Michigan plant to build autonomous and electric vehicles.

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Ford says the investment will add 700 US jobs. Reuters Transportation Editor, Joe White, is highly skeptical.>> Ford could have easily come out today in a different environment and said, hey, we don't think we need as many small cars as we thought we needed a year ago, or two years ago.

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So we're not gonna go forward with this investment. That's what they could have done. That's not what they did. What they did was package this in a way that seems to be responsive to Trump's demands that companies bring production and bring jobs to the United States from Mexico.

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>> Ford, clearly trying to get off a hit list that it's crosstown rival, General Motors is still on. President-elect Donald Trumps starting off the first business day of the new year tweeting, General Motors is sending Mexican made model of Chevy Cruze to U.S. car dealers-tax free across border.

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Make in U.S.A. or pay big border tax!>> They have been importing a very small number of these Cruze hatchbacks from Mexico. Because of the decline in small car demand, they had to lay people of in Ohio. You put two and two together and it looks like they're bringing in cars from Mexico to put people out of work in Ohio.

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That's not really what's going on. That's how it looks.>> The car maker driving this point home. Saying on its website, the Mexican built cruise hatchback is made mostly for drivers outside of the US. And using a low wage country like Mexico to produce it is a no-brainer.